


How Was I Supposed To Know?!

by emilycmbl



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Awkward Kageyama Tobio, Character Study, M/M, Oblivious Hinata Shouyou, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Soulmate-Identifying Marks, implied tanakiyo, implied tsukkiyama
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-10 22:15:36
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28244535
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emilycmbl/pseuds/emilycmbl
Summary: Yes, Shouyou has had his Mark for about a year now andyes,from acertainangle, itsort oflooks like a crown,maybe.But can he really be blamed for not figuring out who his soulmate is when the whole thing is basically a sham?
Relationships: Hinata Shouyou/Kageyama Tobio
Comments: 5
Kudos: 65
Collections: Kagehina Big Bang 2020





	How Was I Supposed To Know?!

**Author's Note:**

> this is my piece for the 2020 kagehina big bang!! it was super fun to work on this, big shoutout especially to my artist saki ([@SakixDraws](https://twitter.com/SakixDraws))
> 
> enjoy!

Hinata Shouyou has never known who his soulmate is. It’s something he hasn’t been able to do much about, for the majority of his life, anyway, especially before he knew what soulmates even are. It doesn’t seem fair to him, really, that he doesn’t know — for every time he hears the phrase ‘the heart knows best’ or ‘your heart is your true compass,’ he becomes more and more convinced that other people’s hearts are being let in on some super special heart secrets that, for whatever reason, his heart has been rudely left out of.

He first encountered this whole ‘not-knowing’ phenomenon when he was six years old. It was the first time he’d ever seen a movie with the plot entirely hinging on the concept of soulmates — a _romantic comedy,_ his mother told him, except there were times when she laughed and he didn’t and he couldn’t really make heads or tails as to why. Regardless, the movie droned on, filled with adults just talking at each other, and the only interesting draw it had was this word that Shouyou had heard maybe a few times in passing (was it from TV shows? Was it his parents? His friends?). He had never felt the need to know what it was before, but now that it was suddenly all the rage in this unfunny romantic comedy, he figured his life could suddenly benefit from knowing what everyone was talking about.

“What’s a soulmate?” he asked after he’d heard the word upwards of a million times. 

His mother explained, very sweetly and very distractedly, stroking a hand softly through his hair as she kept her eyes on their television screen. “Your soulmate is the person you’re meant to be with. You get a happily ever after with them. Like me and your father.”

“Oh,” Shouyou breathed, not understanding the movie’s plot any better. He looked up at his mother. “Who’s my soulmate?”

She looked down at him, smiling. “Well, Shouyou, we’ll have to wait, won’t we?” She pulled him into her lap, and chuckled at her son’s surprised laugh. 

“For what?” He kicked his legs back and forth and held his mother’s hands as they reached around to hug him. 

“For your Mark. It gives you a clue to who your soulmate is. Like in the movie.” She pointed at the screen, but Shouyou was no longer interested in deciphering its mysterious meaning.

“When will I get it?” He hoped it was sometime before the movie ended, or maybe later that day. He wouldn’t want to wait all until the next morning, or even the day after, though. He hoped it was soon. 

“There’s no telling,” his mother said. 

Oh. “What do you mean?”

“It can show up at any time.”

…Oh. “It’s random?”

His mother paused, taking in some dialogue from the movie. It was the tail end of a conversation about high school bands and how the old days seemed so much better. A man said something about making lyrics up on the spot, and Shouyou’s mother laughed lightly.

“I guess you can say that, Shouyou. I’ll explain it to you after.”

But it wouldn’t be interesting _after._ And he might get his Mark before _after,_ and he wouldn’t know what to do about it then if he didn’t get these answers as soon as he could. 

“But how do I know who’s my soulmate?” If it shows up at random, that didn’t seem like it would help. 

“Your Mark helps you find them.”

“But it’s not their name, is it?” He strained his head back to look up at his mother. “How will I know it’s them?” 

She patted his belly. “You will.”

A lady on screen said something about everything only truly making sense after leaving high school. Shouyou didn’t really want to watch the movie anymore. “How does _that_ work?”

“It…it just does.”

“But…”

His mother sighed, taking him off her lap and putting him back on the couch next to her. “I don’t know, Shouyou. I’ll explain it to you later.”

Shouyou was well aware of what his mother sounded like when he’d asked too many questions. This wasn’t it, though; those never usually ended with his mother admitting she had no answer. Maybe no one really knew about this whole soulmate thing. 

The movie immediately lost any interest it might’ve had.

Shouyou doesn’t particularly try again to interrogate the fact that no one else on this planet has any idea of what they’re doing. It’s a sharp awakening, then, at sixteen years of age, on the day when Coach Ukai comes into morning practice ten minutes later than usual. Tanaka is happy, for once not being the last one there, and at first the only difference to their training is that when Ukai arrives the team allows themselves to jeer openly at him for a minute or two. They calm down quickly enough, though, and practice continues as normal. 

Normal for the most part, at least, though it is certainly the most tired Ukai that the volleyball club has had to deal with. If he messes up a couple words in a sentence, calls a quick attack a back attack or somehow manages to confuse Nishinoya and Yamaguchi for one another, then that’s fine — they all know what he means, anyway, and they keep playing. Shouyou overhears him telling Takeda that he’ll probably get his sleep in throughout the day and only wake up for afternoon practice, which sounds suspiciously similar to plans that Shouyou’s been told off for making in the past, but he thinks nothing more of it. 

Shouyou all but forgets about it throughout the day, with classes slogging on and the drone of teachers taking up an uncomfortable amount of space in his head that _could_ be used for focusing on volleyball. Practice goes well as usual — with maybe just a few more games and a few more rallies than originally planned (as usual) — and nothing strikes Shouyou as being particularly off until they’re wrapping up for the night. 

He stretches on the sidelines with the rest of the team, knowing _someone_ will yell at him if he doesn’t stop playing and cool down. He’d already done his share in packing up, too; rolling up the net and storing it away in the dark equipment room and mopping up his share of the floor in record time (which was probably the real reason he hadn’t jumped back onto the court — the net was no longer standing, and Yamaguchi and Tsukishima had been dutifully picking up each ball one by one with the help of Yachi and Shimizu). Tanaka and Nishinoya debate about something beside him, and Shouyou can’t help but listen in (not that their lack of inside voices really give him much choice).

“I think you might be right,” Noya says, inspecting something near Tanaka’s waist.

“What do you mean, ‘might be’? It’s definitely glasses!” He pulls back the waistband of his shorts a little more, giving Noya a clearer view. “See?”

“Uh,” Sugawara starts from the other side of Shouyou, “what are you guys doing?”

Noya turns around. “Ryu’s Mark. He says it’s glasses.” He turns to look back up at Tanaka. “Don’t you think it looks more like an eight? Or an infinity sign?”

“An infinity sign? That’s cool!” Shouyou says, standing up at the same time that Suga walks over to them. “Does that mean you get infinite soulmates?”

“It’s not an infinity sign! It’s a pair of glasses!” He shows the Mark on his hip. It certainly does have two connected circular elements, but the composition of the little thing is a bit vague. Shouyou could see it either way.

“If it’s an eight, then your soulmate could be Kazuhito,” Noya says.

“Glasses!” Tanaka says, emphasising it by pulling his waistband down even more, revealing far more of his hip than he needs to.

“Alright! Keep it in your pants,” Suga scolds, avoiding his eyes.

Behind Tanaka, Shouyou can see Ukai and Asahi discussing something — maybe strategy, advice, pointers; he hadn’t heard exactly what — and at Suga’s admonishment Ukai gives this weird half snort that he tries to cover up with a cough. Shouyou would have called it out, but apparently he’s the only one who notices it — Noya slaps a hand over Shouyou’s eyes, ordering Tanaka to “Show decency in front of the innocent!” (which is met with one of Shouyou’s trademark “Bwuuh??”s) at the same time that Suga says “We don’t need you getting any more naked than you usually do!”

Tanaka huffs, taking his hands from his pants and letting his Mark go unseen once more. “Whatever. Doesn’t change the fact that this means Kiyoko’s my soulmate.”

“You got that just from glasses?” Shouyou asks, peeling Noya’s hand from his face. He wonders if figuring out your soulmate is really that easy or if Tanaka is just that cool. 

Whenever he looks at his own Mark — a weird blotch on the back of his left knee that showed up however many months ago — his stomach gets uneasy, like it’s the world’s most important test and he’s doomed to get the answer wrong. He hasn’t even studied for it. There’s someone out there, he knows, his _soulmate,_ who’s waiting on him to figure out what this random patch of his skin means, so he can find them and they can have their happily ever after. It’s a lot to put on a guy who doesn’t know the least bit about soulmates, or romance, or even how to meet people in a way that doesn’t involve the threat of a fight breaking out in front of a public bathroom. He tries not to think about it too much.

“I don’t know,” Suga says, snapping Shouyou out from his mind, “you can’t tell me that _that,”_ he nods in the general direction of Tanaka’s Mark, “is connected to Shimizu.”

“Yeah! You see, Shouyou, it’s not that simple,” Noya says, placing a sage hand on his shoulder. 

“So many people in this room alone wear glasses,” Suga helpfully provides, not letting Tanaka get a word in. “Takeda wears glasses. Asahi!” He calls out to where the ace and Ukai were still chatting.

“Yeah?”

“Don’t you need glasses? You wear them sometimes, right?”

“Huh?” Asahi turns to them. “Oh, yeah. But I don’t really like the way they look on my face.” He chuckles sheepishly, bringing his hand around to rub at the back of his neck. “My eyesight isn’t bad enough that I need them for volleyball, though, so I don’t wear them on the court.”

“Whoa!” Shouyou gapes. “I didn’t know that!”

_“Okay,_ I get it,” Tanaka groans.

“Tsukishima wears glasses!” Noya exlaims, pointing at the blond in question (who, at the sudden attention, promptly squints his eyes, mutters a blunt “Leave me out of this,” and coolly evades the whole situation).

This time, Ukai is unable to keep his amusement contained to just a strained cough, and his shoulders clearly bounce in the laughter that mixes with Shouyou’s, Suga’s and Noya’s in their shared disbelief of Tanaka and Tsukishima ever being _meant to be._

Tanaka whips around, hurt. “Coach! Don’t _you_ laugh at me too!” 

Ukai coughs again. He clears his throat, then shakes his head for good measure. “I wasn’t.”

He very clearly _was,_ Shouyou thinks, and as Ukai goes on to ignore Tanaka’s suffering and call out a final ‘good work’ to everyone for the night, Shouyou is struck for a second at how weird it was that Ukai seemed to almost have the same sense of humour as they did. 

And then the shock sets in a little, and Shouyou is completely and utterly flabbergasted by how quickly his coach had slipped from someone joining in on their teenage nonsense, if only for a second, back into the reliable adult he knew. He actually _laughed_ with them for the briefest moment, and didn’t even get around to telling them to stop goofing off. He must be _really_ off his game today — either that, or maybe the line between teens and adults just isn’t as clear cut as it used to be. Shouyou prays that Ukai can get proper and healthy rest throughout the coming days, if not just so he doesn’t have to be confronted with this unknown side of his coach ever again. 

Things continue with smooth sailing from then on, as far as Shouyou’s concerned; if ever there was a script to his life, it seems as though most people are playing along accordingly. Which he can’t find room to complain about — anything that allows him to not think too hard and dedicate all his time to volleyball is completely welcome in his eyes. 

So it stands to reason that, if there’s anyone who can come along to ruin his good time, it’s Tsukishima.

It’s getting to be around the time of year that Shouyou first noticed his Mark — he can’t say _the day it first appeared_ or anything like that, because for all he knows, it could’ve been there for weeks or even months, just burning a vague impression of his soulmate on the back of his knee, waiting for him to finally see it one evening when roughhousing with his sister. It wasn’t exactly a patch of his skin that he was known to keep an eye on. He didn’t really think to keep a record of the day at the time, and he wasn’t all that interested in figuring out the Mark either, so now on the possible anniversary of it showing up, Shouyou finds himself contemplating for the first time ever how his Mark even came to be.

He doesn’t manage to get far, though, because a commotion next to him suddenly becomes much more interesting than staying in his own head. 

“Tsukki!” Yamaguchi drops his hands onto the shelf in front of him, causing a louder _bang_ than he might have meant to, if his own flinch at the sound was anything to go by. They’re in the clubroom, changing before afternoon practice and Shouyou hasn’t even started on getting out of his uniform yet. He’s been far too busy spacing out instead. “You didn’t tell me,” Yamaguchi says, curious.

“Tell you what?” Tsukishima pauses in his movements, shirt in hand.

There’s a quiet moment between them that Shouyou can’t decipher; he assumes they’re sharing some sort of special look that only childhood best friends know the meaning of.

Yamaguchi stutters for a second and cocks his head to the side before going back to changing. “Your Mark.”

Tsukishima hesitates, if only slightly. “My what?”

Shouyou leans around Yamaguchi to get a better look at what he’s talking about. On Tsukishima’s back, a bit below his right shoulder blade is a small miscoloured patch of skin that certainly strikes Shouyou as a Mark — he can tell it’s all flowery and… _poetic_ (if he can even call it that), but he’d have to get a closer look at it to see what it actually looks like. From where he’s standing, it kind of just looks like a wonky cross. At the very least, it doesn’t look like something that popped up naturally.

“Oh, Tsukishima!” Shouyou pipes up, stepping closer to him. “When did you get your Mark?” 

Was it recently? Did it show up at the same time Shouyou’s did? If it did, then does that mean these things have a set date for when they show up in the world? Is it Mark season? 

…Does that even make sense? Honestly, he has no idea.

A knot sets in Shouyou’s stomach as he realises just how little he knows about all this, and just how much he has left to learn. Unlike volleyball, which ignites a fire in his heart every time he figures out something ahead of him he has yet to achieve, he mostly tries to ignore the fact that there’s so much he doesn’t know about his own destiny. He knows he has to learn someday — continuing on in this way isn’t exactly the most fair to whoever his soulmate is — but it all seems like such a daunting task. It’s his _soulmate._ It’s his _destiny._ It’s _too much._

Shouyou quickly changes his focus to the Mark, the little thing only slightly clearer now that he’s closer. Tsukishima steps back from Shouyou and turns to him face on, effectively blocking him from any view he could get, but not before he got enough of a glimpse. For a second, he saw it: it’s some sort of sword, or probably a spear, actually, with ribbons wrapped around it and flowing off of it as if fluttering in the wind. Shouyou pouts as he looks up at Tsukishima. Why does _he_ get to have such a cool Mark?

Tsukishima narrows his eyes. “That’s none of your business.”

Shouyou huffs and steps back, resigning himself to finally getting to work on unbuttoning his shirt. 

Beside him, he can still feel some weird tension between Tsukishima and Yamaguchi as they have another silent discussion. He watches them out of the corner of his eye, and there’s a lot of subtle and vague gestures, a lot of general confusion with a hint of annoyance. Tsukishima shrugs his shirt on and clicks his tongue. 

“I just didn’t notice it, okay?” he says, and Shouyou wonders if maybe they’ve had similar discussions before today. “It doesn’t matter. I thought it might just be a new birthmark, or something.”

Shouyou notices that Tsukishima is pointedly _not_ looking at Yamaguchi as he says this, but he can hear the eye roll in his voice nonetheless.

“You thought,” Yamaguchi starts, “it was a new… _birth_ mark…?”

Again, the two look at each other, and again, they say nothing.

Yamaguchi turns from Tsukishima to look at Shouyou. His lips are drawn in a tight line, eyebrows thrown up and eyes shining with disbelief, saying nothing as they share this look together. But Shouyou knows what he’s getting across. This is silent laughter — not only that, it’s Yamaguchi laughing _at_ Tsukishima. Not only _that_ — it’s Yamaguchi laughing at Tsukishima _with_ Shouyou.

…What?

Shouyou can’t help but blink uselessly at Yamaguchi, slack jawed, the contradicting information becoming all too much for his brain to handle. Thinking back on Tsukishima’s words for a second, Shouyou knows that yes, he _is_ in every rightful position to be laughed at right now — because seriously, who’s dumb enough to not notice their Mark straight away like that? That sounds something more like what Shouyou would do.

His brain pauses for a second, rewinds the tape a bit and hits play. That _is_ what Shouyou did. Doesn’t that make Tsukishima just as dumb as Shouyou?

_…What?!_

That doesn’t make sense, Shouyou quickly decides, shaking his head to get rid of the thought. Tsukishima always does what’s cool and smart and never something as dumb and lame as not knowing enough about soulmates and Marks to be so oblivious when his own shows up. But as he stands before him, looking probably the most flustered that Shouyou’s ever seen him (which doesn’t look like much, actually; it seems like he’s glaring at something at the bottom of his glasses while his eye twitches ever so slightly) over making a mistake that Shouyou himself has made, he feels himself inching closer and closer to an absurd truth. Even Yamaguchi, Tsukishima’s best friend and presumably the only person he allows to see the actual human side of him, is only having trouble suppressing a meagre giggle at this, rather than the Earth-shattering revelation Shouyou is currently wrestling with. It’s probably not as big a deal as he’s making it, but that just makes it _all the bigger a deal._

Tsukishima starts making his way to the club room door, muttering a quick “Shut up, Yamaguchi,” on his way.

It’s only then that Yamaguchi allows himself to laugh a little, giggling once Tsukishima has his back towards him. He quickly lets out his snicker, doesn’t apologise to Tsukishima like he normally does, then proceeds to follow his best friend out the door. 

Shouyou stares at the closed door for a moment, not really sure where to land on with all that just happened. 

“Oi, dumbass,” Kageyama snaps.

Shouyou nearly jumps out of his skin, letting out a squeak that is not at all un-manly and horribly high pitched. He completely forgot that Kageyama was even here, too lost in his own thoughts. 

“Quit spacing out. Hurry up and get changed.”

He takes a second to collect himself. “I—! I am!” he huffs, quickly discarding his school uniform.

Kageyama is there for him when he’s done, waiting boredly against the railing opposite the door. As they silently head towards the gym, Shouyou can feel Kageyama’s eyes on him, scrutinising his every thought — it’s not an unwelcome presence, since he’s been like this enough times that Shouyou’s learnt to mostly ignore it. With all the weirdness that seems to be happening around him lately, he’s glad that he can count on Kageyama to show at least some semblance of normality.

* * *

As it turns out, Shouyou can’t count on Kageyama for _shit._

He only starts noticing it one day after a game, when they board the bus back to Karasuno. Kageyama’s being more quiet than usual — especially after a victory — and hardly responds when Takeda congratulates him on his gameplay, or when Daichi tries to start a discussion on the other team’s tactics. Shouyou slots into the window seat of the second row from the back, and when Kageyama takes his place next to him, he’s moving as if he’s pulled every muscle in his body.

Shouyou tries to think back on the game; maybe he missed something, something dumb or over-the-top that he did, or maybe something entirely too shocking from the other team, or maybe a call that the ref made that was way, _way_ off — something that he should have picked up on that Kageyama clearly did. But nothing sticks out to him — Shouyou pretty much nailed it this game. He was able to avoid almost all of the blocks the other team put up, his passes went…at least in the _general_ direction of where he wanted them to go (or at least they went up, okay?), and he was pretty sure his jumps were reaching heights he had never seen before. And they won, anyway, two sets to one, with even a deuce in the second set. _And_ Shouyou scored the winning point. The game wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. Kageyama should be relaxed more than anything.

When Shouyou turns his head to Kageyama, it’s a little hard not to laugh. The glare that usually makes itself at home on his features has been overtaken by what is clearly confusion-but-trying-and-failing-to-cover-up-that-confusion, and Kageyama’s currently using it to stare holes into the back of the headrest in front of him. He’s sitting up straight too, which wouldn’t be too weird — Kageyama doesn’t _just_ have to be unfairly tall, he has to top it off with perfect posture, too — but the way he’s sitting looks like he’s got a plank of wood stapled down his back. The seatbelt is stretching out to compensate for where Kageyama is sitting too upright. Shouyou wonders if he can get through to where Takeda and Daichi couldn’t.

“Good game, Kageyama!”

He doesn’t even flinch. Obviously the back of that headrest is far more interesting than whatever Shouyou’s got to say. 

Right as Shouyou’s about to wave his hand in front of Kageyama’s face, or shake him at the shoulders, or maybe whip out a spare defibrillator someone might have lying around, Kageyama blinks.

“Huh? Oh, right,” he says. He doesn’t look any less confused, or even like he’s particularly paying attention to Shouyou right now. But he turns in his seat to address him anyway. “Hinata, we always, uh…” he starts, then seems to forget whatever he was going to say, not looking Shouyou in the eyes.

“Always…?”

Kageyama lets a few seconds pass. Is he going to bring up whatever’s bothering him about the game? Maybe discuss a new tactic for them to try out? Shouyou wouldn’t put it past him — even when they win, even when they’re on a winning streak, surely Kageyama can’t be satisfied if he notices something that needs fixing. Shouyou awaits his advice. The low rumble of the bus and the quiet chatter from their teammates never seemed so intrusive before.

“We always sit together on the bus rides, don’t we?” Kageyama says.

Oh. _This_ is what’s on his mind?

“I…? Guess?” Shouyou answers, pretty much automatically, as his mind scrambles to reset with this turn of conversation.

Kageyama’s eyebrows pull closer together as he brings a hand up to his chin, humming in thought. “Yeah…” Shouyou opens his mouth to say something, but Kageyama is already talking again. “And this is normal.” It’s not a question this time. “For us, I mean.”

Shouyou blinks. _What_ is he talking about? “Yes…? Kageyama, are you okay? Why do you care about our bus seats?” 

Is something so trivial really taking up enough space in his head that he feels compelled to bring it up with Shouyou? Or maybe there’s a connection between bus seats and volleyball… Maybe Kageyama’s heard something about bus rides and what seats you sit on affecting how you play? But it’s not like that would explain everything else that’s up with him right now. Shouyou sits up a little bit straighter, though, just in case.

“And you’re. Okay with this,” Kageyama says. 

Apart from the fact that it doesn’t even seem like Kageyama heard what Shouyou said, now he can’t even tell if that was supposed to be a question or not. If it is, what sort of answer is Kageyama expecting? ‘No’? ‘I actually hate sitting next to you on the bus, and that’s why I’ve been doing it pretty much every time we’ve ridden one’? ‘Clearly I hate myself as well and like being put into situations where every moment is a living hell for me’? If it’s not a question — what exactly is he getting at? Why _wouldn’t_ Shouyou be okay with it? It’s just a bus seat. And unless Kageyama is hiding something, that’s all it _should_ be. Shouldn’t it?

“Well, yeah,” Shouyou starts, “of course I’m fine with it, as long as you don’t snore too loud…and you don’t drool on me or something!”

Kageyama just hums in thought again. 

Shouyou swears he can feel something inside of him snap — wouldn’t Kageyama normally respond to him with something like, _‘You_ should make sure you don’t drool on _me,_ dumbass!!’ or some other comeback that has more volume than wit? Shouyou can tell he’s not going to get anything of the sort, at least not right now, and maybe not for the entire trip back — Kageyama’s face is all squished up in the way that it is when he’s thinking too hard about something, completely off in his own world. Shouyou supposes he should be happy he got the last word in, but it doesn’t really feel like much of an accomplishment when Kageyama basically forfeited.

The bus ride never manages to escape the awkward atmosphere, and Shouyou could swear that Takeda is intentionally taking a super long, out-of-the-way route through seven different alternate dimensions and ten or twelve parallel universes; ones where everyone around Shouyou is replaced by _almost_ exact replicas and he’s stuck trying to figure out what on Earth’s changed. Maybe he’s overthinking this. 

Or maybe not, because he can really, _really_ feel Kageyama’s eyes on him right now. And usually that’s fine. But Shouyou can almost _hear_ the staring at this point. He turns to Kageyama, and as soon as they make the briefest of eye contact, Kageyama just as quickly averts his eyes. Shouyou blinks. He turns back. What’s _that_ about?

He turns to Kageyama again, who’s now doing his best impression of someone who’s incredibly interested in the fine machinations of the bus aisle, and not at all interested in staring far too loudly at Shouyou. It’s a good thing his acting skills suck, though, because Shouyou can see right through him. He leaves it be for now, deciding instead to look out the window.

More of those parallel dimension hills pass by as the bus rumbles along, and after giving it a few good minutes, Shouyou turns back to Kageyama to catch him in the act. When he does, there’s a look on Kageyama’s face that he’s never seen before, and he doesn’t really know how to place it. Before he can get a chance at figuring it out, though, Kageyama’s whipped his head around, as if it isn’t incredibly obvious what he’s doing.

“Kageyama!” Shouyou says.

Kageyama clears his throat and turns to look at him slowly. “…Yeah?”

“Is there something you want?”

Kageyama just looks at him for a few moments. At least he’s upgraded from pretending not to be staring at Shouyou to just staring at him in his face. He’s not really making eye contact, though.

“Hinata, uh…” Shouyou prepares himself for another conversation where Kageyama forcibly takes the reins for its entirety. How much nonsense could he get away with saying without Kageyama even noticing? “Your jumps were…” Their eyes meet for the briefest of moments before Kageyama looks away again. Shouyou’s not unfamiliar with Kageyama failing to make eye contact one hundred per cent of the time, but this seemed a little much, even for him. “I mean,” he continued, “your jumps looked. Good. Today.” He nods, apparently satisfied with how he delivered that.

Shouyou blinks. Is that really all he wanted to say? Just _that?_ He’ll admit that it feels good to know that he’s been improving so much lately — and so much so that Kageyama not only noticed, but felt the need to comment on it — and _maybe_ his face warms up just a bit at the unprompted praise, but the fact of his jumps looking good isn’t enough to make Kageyama act like…this. Is it? Something else is clearly going on, but Shouyou doesn’t know if he really wants to get to the bottom of it.

Just as Shouyou’s contemplating the deep, hidden meaning behind Kageyama’s perplexing conundrum, Kageyama finally locks eyes with him steadily, and does something Shouyou would have never anticipated: he actually _smiles._ It’s a nice smile, too — it’s small, almost shy, but it’s there, and it’s somehow _not_ one of the most terrifying (or forced) things Shouyou has seen. It actually looks nice. Kageyama looks…nice. He smiles, and says, “Good job.”

Shouyou doesn’t know what to say. Nothing has convinced him more that he’s been surrounded by an army of body snatchers than this very moment — he has half a mind to break through the glass of the bus window and jump out right now, and run as fast as he can back to his home universe. But the window remains intact, as does the growing silence between the two, and it isn’t until he hops off the bus back at Karasuno that he realises he didn’t even thank Kageyama for the compliment. He’d say Kageyama doesn’t seem to mind, but if today proved anything, it’s that Shouyou has even less of an idea of what’s going on in Kageyama’s head than he initially thought. Leave it to him to make Shouyou realise he has absolutely no idea what’s going on with most of his life. Maybe he really just hasn’t been paying attention. To everything. Everyone.

The realisation doesn’t help Shouyou much, because he feels like he’s more in his own head than ever before. If only he could overthink this much when it came to his studies — his brain gets stuck on the stupidest things, he swears. It just feels like there’s so much swirling around his head that even realising that he pays attention so little to the people around him makes him pay attention to them _less_ and just stress over exactly what he’s missing. Someone he thought he knew back to front could come up to him today and act like a stranger. Ms Ono is probably going to walk into next period and reveal she’s dumber than him. He’s going to wake up tomorrow to find out Natsu’s been managing three full time jobs, a thirty year mortgage and a 401(k). 

“Miyabe got her Mark last night!” he hears one of his classmates declare. There’s a group of students at the front of the classroom, trying to fill the time of their lunch break as best as they can.

“From Class 2?”

“Yeah!”

Shouyou doesn’t know the person they’re talking about, but the mention of Marks gets him to pay attention to the conversation anyway. 

“Do you know what it looks like?” Imamura — from the soccer club, Shouyou remembers — adds into the conversation.

“There’s _no way_ I could’ve gotten her to tell me what it looks like.”

“Well, I got my Mark recently, too. I bet hers matches mine.”

There’s a general commotion that rises within the group. Sugimoto (who Shouyou’s about seventy three per cent sure is in the photography club) calls out, “Shut up _,_ I bet you haven’t even _gotten_ yours yet!”

“I have!”

“What’s it look like, then?”

“I don’t have to tell you that.”

Sugimoto grabs Imamura’s arm and pulls at his shirt. “Well, then where is it? Lemme get a good look at it—”

“I’m not showing you!” They begin this weird half-joking, half-serious wrestling match which eventually ends with Imamura holding Sugimoto in a headlock. “You know, I bet Miyabe’s Mark is in the same place as mine is.” 

Sugimoto starts to struggle against Imamura, trying to shut him up even while immobilised by his arm. 

“What does it matter _where_ the Mark is?” Acchan speaks up beside Shouyou.

Acchan is as much a part of the conversation as Shouyou is — which is to say, not at all — and the comment was meant for just the two of them. Either that or it was made just for Acchan’s personal consideration, and had managed to slip out of his mouth instead of staying locked squarely inside his mind. 

Shouyou looks at his friend, who with his comment now seems to be disinterested in listening along any further to their fellow classmates’ gossip.

“Does it not matter where the Mark is?” Shouyou asks him. 

Acchan shrugs, not pausing in his movements of opening up his bento box. “I don’t see why it should.”

That’s more or less what Shouyou had figured, but then again, he hadn’t really thought about the _placement_ before, or whether or not that could have any significance. 

“So it doesn’t mean much, huh?” Shouyou ponders aloud. “Where it is,” he clarifies.

“I don’t actually know,” Acchan says. “But why would it?”

Shouyou breathes out a sigh. He doesn’t know why Acchan would suddenly have all the answers. “It feels like everything about Marks and soulmates is kinda…random? Like, how am I supposed to know what is and isn’t important about it all?”

The date that it shows up (Shouyou can’t remember), where it is on his skin (the back of his left knee — not exactly the most convenient place for him to see it), what it even _looks_ like — well, Shouyou knows that last bit is probably the most important part of it all, but he can’t even make _that_ out. 

Is there anything else he’s missing? 

Well. There’s also the matter of who it’s supposed to connect him to. 

“I don’t think you have to worry about all that,” Acchan says.

“What?”

“Well, we’re still young, you know. There’s more important stuff for us to be focusing on other than our soulmates, don’t you think?”

Shouyou isn’t so sure. Yes, he knows that someone somewhere along the line probably told him to prioritise his academic career over any forays into romance, but as soon as the word ‘soulmate’ enters the conversation… Destiny seems to outweigh school _just_ a bit. He slumps in his chair.

“Have you gotten your Mark yet, Acchan?”

He shakes his head no, then shrugs. “I’m not all that fussed about it, though.”

Shouyou sits back up. “You’re not?”

Acchan shrugs again. “Like I said, I feel like there’s more important things, you know?”

“I guess…” With their combined lack of knowledge on all things soulmates, Acchan really seems to be in the same boat as Shouyou. Or at least, a similar enough boat, like he’s in a kayak and Acchan’s in a canoe, but only one of them actually has some idea of how to use a paddle to steer out of the water. “You have a good grip on this stuff,” Shouyou says.

“I really don’t,” Acchan laughs. “I just don’t think it’s as important as everyone makes it out to be. There’s always so much weight put onto soulmates and your Mark and who you’re gonna spend the rest of your life with, but how are we even supposed to know…” He more or less cuts himself off, apparently deciding against the rest of that sentence.

But Shouyou needs to hear it. “Know what?”

Acchan sighs. “I don’t know. How are we supposed to know _anything,_ I guess. Like you said, everything about soulmates is kinda random.” He pauses for a second. Shouyou looks at him expectantly, urging him to continue. “Like, how could there be meaning behind something so arbitrary as some discoloured skin, you know? How did the first humans look at their Marks hundreds of thousands of years ago and know they had a soulmate? Who was the first one to figure it out? It’s not exactly clear. I don’t see why it should get in the way of our lives.”

“Well—” Shouyou starts, then stops himself. He’d heard the stories, same as Acchan no doubt had, about the beginnings of soulmates. Of course, each one always differed, between cultures, between times, between each mouth that told it. Shouyou never really looked that deeply into the logic of them before, but maybe Acchan’s onto something here. Maybe the fragility of those stories isn’t alone — maybe there’s less behind the curtain of soulmates than everyone says there is. “So, what’re you saying? Marks don’t mean anything? Wouldn’t that mean everyone’s faking having a soulmate?”

“I don’t think they’re faking it. I think they believe it. It’s all just a bit…weird to me. I don’t know.”

Shouyou gets what he means. “Then, all of this isn’t really—”

“Hey. Hinata.”

Shouyou jumps.

Too engrossed in his conversation with Acchan, Shouyou hadn’t noticed a certain setter walking into his classroom and right up to his desk. Kageyama stood, towering over him, looking just slightly more pink than usual. Maybe he ran the distance between the classrooms.

“Hey, Kageyama,” he says, collecting himself. “What’s up?”

It takes a second for him to register Shouyou’s question.

“I was just, uh, wondering…” In his right hand he’s holding a bento box at his side. He taps his fingers against it. “If you wanted to…have lunch together?” He asks it as if he’s also asking himself — _was that what I meant to say?_

Shouyou blinks. “Sure,” he says, not really knowing any other response. What else can he do when Kageyama’s acting out of the ordinary than just go along with it now? Weird is the new normal for Shouyou, it seems. Why not act like this isn’t the first time Kageyama’s approached him like this. Why not have lunch with Kageyama. At this point — why not?

Shouyou waits for him to pull up a free chair. Kageyama continues to stand in front of his desk. They both look at each other, waiting for the other to move. Acchan gets started on his lunch.

Finally, Kageyama clears his throat, and takes half a step back towards the door.

Shouyou lets out a breath. “Oh.” He gets up from his chair, saying a quick goodbye to Acchan, who only nods back, his face currently full of food.

He follows Kageyama out into the hallway, keeping up with his pace as they weave in between sparse scatterings of students. 

“Did you wanna talk about last week’s game?” Shouyou asks. “Or something you wanna try at training today?”

Kageyama looks at him with an expression Shouyou can’t decipher, something that seems to be happening more and more often now. “No.”

“Is there something we need to study for with Yachi?” Is there a huge important test coming up that Shouyou completely forgot about? It wouldn’t be the first time. He needs to get the drop on this one as fast as he can.

“No.”

“Oh.” His heart calms down just as quickly as it had started racing. Sure enough, they pass by Yachi’s classroom without even dropping in to say hi, before making their way down the stairs at the end of the hallway. “Then…” Shouyou looks up at Kageyama. 

“What?”

“Why are we having lunch together?”

Kageyama almost looks bored by the question. “I just wanted to have lunch with you.”

Shouyou stops on the landing. Kageyama’s halfway to the bottom of the stairs before he realises he’s not being followed anymore, and turns back to look up at Shouyou. Shouyou looks down at Kageyama. At the apex of his jump, right as his hand swings and connects with one of Kageyama’s sets, they’re at about the same height difference as they are now. 

“Are you coming?” Kageyama asks.

It takes Shouyou a second. “…Yeah! Yeah, I am.” He makes his way down to Kageyama’s side, and they continue onwards. “I was just…” _thinking about how we’ve always had a reason before,_ is how that sentence ends, but for some reason it hides in his throat. He and Kageyama are usually separated at this time of day, and if they’re not, there’s usually some ulterior reason for it — volleyball, studying, anything. They’ve never just…sat down for lunch together.

Shouyou shakes his head, letting the thought leave his mind. He doesn’t know why he’s making any sort of a deal of it — they’re friends, aren’t they? And friends just hang out with each other, normally, with no motives behind it. He’s just sitting for lunch with a friend. Just the two of them.

Kageyama leads him outside and they walk between the school buildings for a minute or two before they come upon a bench hugging one of the footpaths winding around the school. It just narrowly misses being in the shade of a nearby cherry blossom tree. They make themselves comfortable on the bench.

“So,” Shouyou starts, “who do you usually sit with for lunch?”

Kageyama shrugs. “Nobody, really.”

Shouyou can’t help the snort that escapes him.

“Hey, don’t laugh at me, asshole!”

“I’m not laughing!” Shouyou mocks offense.

Kageyama glares at him for a second, but drops it. They fall into a comfortable silence, both of them starting on their lunches.

The only thing between them is silence. It grows, ever slowly, and holds them both in its embrace as they continue eating together. It’s nice, and not at all what Shouyou expected.

Then again, he didn’t really know what to expect anyway.

The silence _is_ nice but not enough to keep his mind occupied, and eventually his thoughts drift back to his conversation with Acchan — the one he was just getting into before Kageyama decided his time would be better spent sitting down and not talking at all with him. 

(And maybe it’s a _little_ bit better spent — maybe all that loud staring Kageyama’s doing actually sounds quite good when paired with the silence between them. 

So he looks at Kageyama and. He’s actually…minding his own business. There’s a strange dip in Shouyou’s heart that he hopes isn’t some random symptom of food poisoning, and belatedly he realises now _he’s_ the one who’s staring.)

He’s sure Kageyama would have nothing intelligent to add to his and Acchan’s conversation, but that doesn’t stop Shouyou from wondering what exactly he _would_ say. How much does Kageyama know about all of this? Does he have his Mark yet? Does he know who his soulmate is? Is he more like Shouyou, in that he has no idea what he’s doing, or more like Acchan — who actually seems to have thought out his stance on everything pretty thoroughly?

It’s probably the former. Shouyou can’t see Kageyama devoting his brain power to anything except volleyball. Surely if he meets his soulmate he won’t think so deeply into the meaning of it all — of Marks, of the supposed fateful connection between the two, of the logic of it all. Of everything that tripped Shouyou up. 

What would Kageyama even be like around his soulmate?

Shouyou stops at the thought. Well, he tries to. It’s the intention that counts. 

The thought stays in his head, just as his eyes stay on Kageyama, and he can’t find it in himself to move.

He doesn’t even know what it is, but some force his holding his mind to the boy sitting next to him and not letting him leave. It occurs to him with incredible, blinding, annoying clarity that it would be the easiest thing in the world to ask Kageyama these questions straight to his face, and yet, the silence bogs down his voice like it never has before. For once his mind is moving faster than his mouth and it’s clamping it down, shut tight, for reasons he’s not privy to. Since when has he ever had a hard time blurting out whatever nonsense is on his mind?

Soulmates are to blame, Shouyou concludes. Everything about them. It’s all too weird for him to deal with, and Kageyama acting weird lately certainly hasn’t helped things, and he’s not even going to think about how weird it is that he kind of likes just sitting here with Kageyama, even if there’s exactly zero volleyball involved. Thinking about Kageyama and soulmates is just…a weird, and probably bad, combination.

There must be some way for Shouyou to either ground himself in all these thoughts — to reassure himself he’s not going insane, and everything he’s thinking (or not thinking, considering how much he really, truly doesn’t know) is actually _normal_ — or, to forget about all of this entirely, and get rid of soulmates from his brain once and for all. Maybe he could try and do both at the same time. 

By the time they finish lunch, they’ve still barely said a word to each other, and Shouyou’s no further away from cluelessness from when he first noticed his Mark.

He decides to forget all about it, at least for the rest of the day.


End file.
